The threshold for conscious report: Signal loss and response bias in visual and frontal cortex

Bram van Vugt; Bruno Dagnino; Devavrat Vartak; Houman Safaai; Stefano Panzeri; Stanislas Dehaene; Pieter R Roelfsema

doi:10.1126/science.aar7186

The threshold for conscious report: Signal loss and response bias in visual and frontal cortex

Bram van Vugt, Bruno Dagnino, Devavrat Vartak, Houman Safaai, Stefano Panzeri, Stanislas Dehaene, Pieter R Roelfsema

Netherlands Institute for Neuroscience (NIN)

Research output: Contribution to journal/periodical › Article › Scientific › peer-review

240 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

Why are some visual stimuli consciously detected, while others remain subliminal? We investigated the fate of weak visual stimuli in the visual and frontal cortex of awake monkeys trained to report stimulus presence. Reported stimuli were associated with strong sustained activity in frontal cortex and frontal activity was weaker and quickly decayed for unreported stimuli. Information about weak stimuli could be lost at successive stages en route from visual to frontal cortex and these propagation failures were confirmed by microstimulation of area V1. Fluctuations in response bias and sensitivity during perception of identical stimuli were traced back to pre-stimulus brain-state markers. A model in which stimuli become consciously reportable when they elicit a non-linear ignition process in higher cortical areas explained our results.

Original language	English
Pages (from-to)	537-542
Journal	Science
Volume	360
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1126/science.aar7186
Publication status	Published - 2018

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Failed ignition - why some visual cues don’t reach consciousness
P.R. Roelfsema
26/03/2018 → 20/05/2019
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AU - van Vugt, Bram

AU - Dagnino, Bruno

AU - Vartak, Devavrat

AU - Safaai, Houman

AU - Panzeri, Stefano

AU - Dehaene, Stanislas

AU - Roelfsema, Pieter R

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AB - Why are some visual stimuli consciously detected, while others remain subliminal? We investigated the fate of weak visual stimuli in the visual and frontal cortex of awake monkeys trained to report stimulus presence. Reported stimuli were associated with strong sustained activity in frontal cortex and frontal activity was weaker and quickly decayed for unreported stimuli. Information about weak stimuli could be lost at successive stages en route from visual to frontal cortex and these propagation failures were confirmed by microstimulation of area V1. Fluctuations in response bias and sensitivity during perception of identical stimuli were traced back to pre-stimulus brain-state markers. A model in which stimuli become consciously reportable when they elicit a non-linear ignition process in higher cortical areas explained our results.

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JF - Science

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The threshold for conscious report: Signal loss and response bias in visual and frontal cortex

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Failed ignition - why some visual cues don’t reach consciousness

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